


wildflower

by unkahii



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Dystopia, Established Relationship, F/M, Symbolism, atsumu risking his neck to see reader, banter between reader and atsumu, characters search for freedom, first work here let's see how it goes, making life choices, sorta dark but then it's also dystopia, the banter between the twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25993942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unkahii/pseuds/unkahii
Summary: In a world where more than half of the population does not possess the right to make choices, even for those that do, the allowed choices concerning love are few and far in between. Yet, Atsumu chooses freedom and you, knowing it can cost him his life even, thus making it his kind of rebellion.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Reader
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	wildflower

**Author's Note:**

> ➤ prompt: Atsumu + “since we decided to be infinite, there’s no ending and there’s no fear” [req]

For a moment, his head fell back to admire the sky. 

It was still the same as it had been for the last few days, a muddy, murky grey that looked like the unclean surfaces of an abandoned cottage, caked with a 3-inch thick layer of dust and dirt, sad, hopeless and most importantly, lonely. For a while Atsumu meditated on the it, before quietly letting his eyes fall back to the dilapidated garage's door and making his way over. 

The humid darkness immediately engulfed him, but unlike the air outside, despite being stuffy, it didn't feel suffocating. Albeit, navigating through the sea of odd objects and bits and pieces of this and that, without tripping over and falling was challenging. But there was something about the paintbrushes and screw-drivers lying about here and there, with a carelessness so supreme that it almost made them seem _free_ , which resulted in making him smile wistfully, as usual. The familiar groan of the radio was there today too and so was the sound of your voice humming out that century old tune, "let me fly away tonight...I am an escapist, I don't want to come back" 

"You have crap texting habits, y'know." 

Atsumu froze in his tracks, brows joining to form a tight line. "What the hell," he muttered to himself, the smile on his face evaporating within a split second. He opened his mouth to riposte but only to be cut off by your sardonic quip, 

"So, very much pathetic, 'Tsumu. Don't you know that it's impossibly rude to keep someone on read for two whole days? Forget rude, it's just outrageous. I could very well throw you out of here and never let you back in." 

A scowl made its way over to his face, causing his mouth to bend downwards irritably. Atsumu tried digging into the messy heap of the abysmally blurry memories in his head; even the (obviously trivial) reason for why he had got into a fight with osamu this morning was beyond his reach. He racked his brain but simply failed to find the event of ignoring your texts and keeping you on read. 

“Bullshit,” he said sceptically, “when did I keep you on read?” 

“Of course you won’t remember Mr. Atsumu Miya. Check your damn phone, moron.”

His face fell, the frown dissolved away when  
scrolling down his chats he discovered your claim to be hundred percent true. . But somehow or the other in the trademark Atsumu fashion, he managed to brush it away and pulled himself together way too quick, as if nothing had actually happened. 

Shit went on in his life too, you knew that very well. He deserved the space. 

“Guess I did miss out on your texts,” he drawled out, strolling over to where you sat on the floor. “You can forgive that much, ok? It’s alright.” 

All you could do in response was to roll your eyes tiredly. A dry chuckle emerged from his lips, well aware that he had been forgiven. Lucky for him, you always knew when to hold back. 

He dropped to his knees at your side. Your gazes at last locked properly. “Hey,” he finally said. The silence on your part however stretched out, as with a familiar desperation you searched the rippling brown of his eyes for something—but what, you would never be able to pinpoint. You searched and never really found what you were searching, and sometimes it made you wonder if you were searching in the wrong place altogether. Uncertainty probably didn’t belong there. You tore your eyes away and faced the paint splattered across the car’s door instead. 

(It’s not in his eyes, not among the contours of his face either. Instead if you are being honest with yourself, you can find doubts on your visage as reflected in his brown eyes)

-“You shouldn’t be here,” you whispered out. A sigh as loud as the groan of the sea emerged from his lips, releasing the tension that seemed to have been built up through thousand years. Settling down on the floor at your side, knees crossed, he joined you in staring at the coloured flower petals (that had probably been put there by you) on the fading red paint of the car’s body. 

“Where did ya find this one now?” he asked, averting the question you had shot at him just like usual. You had been given an explanation countless times before, he was here because he wished to.

So, giving up, you chose to answer him. “Down in the woods, one that’s along the bypass. She’s broken now, yes, but I think I can find a way to make her work. Used Kita’s truck to haul her till here…

“Must have been quite a beauty once upon a time. Now, look at her, abandoned and lonely.” 

The wrench in your soot stained hand could be explained but Atsumu couldn’t find an explicit reason for the existence of the pale yellow flowers with little green leaves. But then again, he thought, you had always been one to look out for beauty even in things that were probably broken beyond repair. 

“Thinking why I painted the flowers?”

Your eyes met again, this time instead of the searching look in yours, something playful and yet sad at the same time twinkled in them. A smile laced your lips, urging him to respond and say yes.

(Or in other words, admit that you had read his mind once again, like you had always done, like you would always do.)

His eyes traced the path back to the pale yellow flowers. “Why? It’s ‘nother whim of yours, right?”

"Whim? Hmm…you could say that. I kinda wanted to give her the wild look. Like she belongs to the world, and doesn't give a shit about whether she'd be thrown into jail for wearing flowers or not." 

To this, he didn't have an answer, neither a comeback. The words left the blood in his veins quivering in quiet shock, a weird kind of blow that only you could inflict, a gust of wind that carried the wilderness under its wings. He loved it so much nonetheless, this living on the edge feeling that came with being in your company. As if he was finally doing something worthwhile. 

"I want her to be unlike us," you added as an afterthought, in an almost whisper. "I want her to stand out, to escape from this hell of a place, and live, for once." 

Sometimes, even listening to you talk like this made him feel like he was doing something utterly wrong. It made him want to glance around furtively and make sure that no one was listening on to you. And yet it gave him that weird thrill that one gets from doing something scandalous deliberately, just to defy the rules.

"Hmm... that's, so you." 

"So me?" 

"Stupid, reckless and," his voice trailed away, and you watched as Atsumu's face broke into a small grateful smile, the very familiar smile that he gave you each time you decided to speak your heart out, as if to say, _thank you for being you_. "Free," he completed. 

Listening to you talk made him feel like he was living for once. Living his life and not just chasing some unattainable goal. 

"What about her though?" he piped in, letting those brown eyes roam the messy garage and at the end halting at a corner. Your brows wove themselves together and curiously you followed his line of sight, only to widen as they stopped. 

"What about it?" You questioned back. Atsumu repositioned himself, so that now he was facing the mannequin standing in the corner. The fabric of the dress it had been made to wear was of a rough kind, as was expected to be seen in the poorer districts like this one. It was torn at several places, the colour had faded to take an ugly shade that looked like soiled newspaper.

"Won't ya complete it?" 

However, that was not what made it stand out in all its eccentric glory. Pinned at several places on the muddy white dress, were flowers, feathers, and leaves and sequins and beads had been woven into the gaps in between them. It looked ridiculous at first sight, like a child's first ever attempt at dressing up its doll that ends in disaster. It looked like an ambitious project gone wrong. It looked like shattered dreams. 

Yet, if Atsumu stared at it for a little while longer, it looked like an oasis in hell. 

Guiltily, you glanced away from the corner, hiding your gaze. "What?" he pushed on. "Or are ya tellin' me that you gave up on it." 

You wanted to blurt out and proclaim, retort back just to retort, "yes! So what if I have given up on it?!" But even if the sheer lack of money in your purse screamed at you to give up, even if the pressure of the darkened sky peeking in through the gap in the windows urged you to drop even the things that you loved most, did you want to give up on them at all? Not when this blonde haired jerk risked his neck every three days just to see you...

_Would giving up suit you?_

"See," you began slowly, trying to be as patient as possible with your explanation. "I don't know what to do." 

He didn't argue back although the potential to spark another one was definitely there. Your cluelessness wasn't restricted to just your inability to think up what to do with the dress next. It was everywhere in your life and existence— the big interrogation mark following one same question, "what should I do" . Maybe that's why he chose silence over speech, because he knew where the origins of those words lay. 

For the same confusion loomed over his life too. "I get it." He sighed. "Well, same here." 

But unlike him, you were forced to snort in slight disbelief. "What do you mean by 'same here' ? You are going to win the tournament this year too, unless that genius prodigy, what's his name— some Kageyama beats you. And then within the next six months, you'll head off for the training camp up north, direct ticket to be one of the snipers in the military's so-called golden division. Atsumu Miya, the best sniper in the state's arsenal, number of kills highest—" 

"Shut up. I don' want to," he cut across you restlessly, "do all that. I don' feel like. I don't" 

You considered his words, weighed them inside your head, with a magnifying glass mentally studied the despair that had ended up pouring out through them, the frustration that had driven him to this point, and the very alien bitterness towards his life seeping out through the gaps in the syllables. The words swirled around in your mind like a never ending cycle of echoes. 

"Don't you love shooting?" 

"I do. But not like this. It has become...too suffocatin'." 

"Do you not want to continue?"

Silence

"I don't think so." 

(And that's where this wretched system leads everyone, even those that loyally love what they love and have been entitled to be born with wings) 

Your head fell back in something akin to exasperation and yet which was not exactly so. Slivers of the sky did slip out through the many holes in the tin roof, but to be honest, it made no difference. The colour of the roof and the colour of the sky was the same murky greyish-brown. 

(One painted so by poverty, other by the conquest for gold. Both serving the same purpose, to siphon out hope) 

"You," you started loudly and dramatically, "had your entire fucking life set. You would never have to wonder how to manage dinner for a night, or for the next day. You could give your kids the same comfort you have grown up in. Why then, mr. know-it-all Atsumu Miya are you giving up on your goddamn career? I thought you loved shooting more than anything!" 

But the sigh that arrived as a response doused all the fire that you might have attempted to light with your words. He was exhausted, you could hear it in that sigh. "It's sad. I hate it too. It doesn't feel good lately. 

"I feel trapped. It's suffocatin'." 

They hit you squarely in the chest, these words. The emotions present there were real, measuring quite some tonnes in weight. The air of logic and sharp jabs that you had been attempting to summon, dispersed away almost immediately at this confession. The sadness was there. You peered into his face thoughtfully, tender feelings blooming at the base of your tongue. 

"Isn't that way too much sad," you mused out loud. "To have what you love feel like a trap." 

Quietness persisted on his part however. You took a long look at his blonde hair, and his sharply defined features, that well-built physique that didn't scream out poverty or malnutrition— he belonged to a world you would never have access to. "You're a weird one," you hummed out, "running away to spend time with me, when you could just have anybody's hand in marriage. And now you're being so shamelessly honest too." 

"I chose you," he announced, voice firm. "It's my choice that I want to be with you and not any other person they force down upon me." 

Truthfully, it was quite the daredevil act to choose to be in love with someone, when the privilege of choice came only to a handful, and even for them, the choices related to love were unimaginably far away. Here, you couldn't choose love, here you did it like a duty, an obligation, a responsibility. But he of course was an idiot, as were you. In your own words, the reassurance came back to the back of your mind, 

_"We need a few idiots in this place. To keep 'em reminding that this country is made of living things and not robots."_

His hand however connected with your cheek, movements soft and careful. It was his silent plea to you to turn around and face him, and so you did, shifted yourself so that you were gazing straight into the depths of Atsumu’s brown eyes. There was no smile on his face, the expressions were heavy and sad. But still there was tenderness, the kind born from being in pain together, the kind that comes about because you know, the other is suffering as much as you are and hence you bond, over the sadness that you share and yet you don't, circumstantially speaking. Two people on opposite ends of the globe, crying over heartbreak, even if the reasons for it are different people. 

“Hey,” you finally returned back his greeting. “What’s up?”

“Sometimes, I seriously feel jealous of ‘Samu. He is not bound by things like these.”

“Understandable.”

“Y/n, I love ya.”

You couldn’t help but smile, looking away like a blushing teenger in puppy love. But he pulled your face closer and joined his lips to yours. The worries that plagued you day in and out, the fear-filled thoughts of the enforcers crawling through the streets to capture the rule-breakers like you melted away into the warmth of his mouth upon yours. A blissful blankness filled your head, erasing away all the needs to think. You would never need drugs to lull your inhibitions away till you had him, and he had you, for love was maybe the strongest possible drug to be found, strong enough to wipe away the traces of fear, make you smile despite the leaden sky weighing down upon your little world, and extract the words “I want to be in love with you, it’s my decision, you're the one, I know. So suck it up.” 

“Fly away escapist and never come back,” the radio still serenaded in the background. 

.  
.

"Y/n, let's run away." 

Not only yours, but from the corner of your eyes you could see Osamu's eyes widening under the effect of sheer surprise too. The couple of seconds that arrived following this very very daring and apparently childish announcement was thick with a weird mixture of disbelief and panic. It was Osamu who broke the silence. 

"I always knew you had a few screws missing in your head." 

At the speed of lightning, the deadpan expression on Atsumu's face morphed into the fiercest scowl of the century. So much so that it almost made you giggle. But following your better judgement, you bit back your laughter. This was the worst possible time for humour. 

"Oh, shut up, 'Samu. Don't butt into our business."

"Our business?" you repeated incredulously. His head wheeled towards you. "You want to run away with me? Is this supposed to be a joke?" 

"It's not a fucking joke." Atsumu spat, supremely annoyed. "Please, I am being serious. Can ya quit this banter?" 

You surveyed his face. The cheap, dim yellow light of your room casted a melancholic look on his features— as if dragging all the woe that he preferred to bury inside his chest to the surface, for the eyes of the world to see (and judge). Vulnerability, that’s the proper word in this context. The flame in his eyes was of the quiet rumbling kind, but what fuelled those flames to burn was the heartache he felt on a daily basis; the pain one goes through when the world turns the one you love against you too, and you are forced to face them on the battlefield. In Atsumu’s case, his life-long love had become the reason for his daily asphyxiation. 

It’s messed up. Badly. The star long-range shooter in the state, fated to join the military on his twenty-first birthday and become a part of the elite snipers belonging to the golden division. A life of wealth (albeit risky, professionally speaking), the privilege to make endless personal choices, the fountain of alcohol and cigars and entertainment never running dry, and most importantly a stable source of food, clothing and a roof above the head awaiting him—it’s the almost perfect life that most dream of. 

But joining also meant staining your name and your hands with the ink that symbolised your status as one of those that choke people’s voices. Could you bear that? Those would be the hands that stamp on papers decreeing the lives of many to be turned into hell, legalizing their animal-like treatment. 

Could you bear to drag poor children out of their homes, be the reason why thousands shed tears everyday. If you could, lucky you. If not, twenty four hours every seven days of the week would be spent in utmost suffocation. 

Just like Atsumu Miya, the star long-range shooter in the state who had received the notification instructing him to move to the northern camp for his training in two weeks, and now, frustrated, exhausted and most importantly asphyxiated he stood facing you, almost pleading and helpless. 

If freedom was possible here, it would be found with you. Out under the open sky, where you chose life and waited for the stars to finally make an appearance. 

“You’re crazy,” you muttered exasperatedly and shook your head in weak disapproval. “You have no idea where it could get us.”

“He doesn’t apparently,” Osamu supplied from his post on the stool that stood at a corner of your dimly lit bedroom. “You’d be killed.”

Soundlessly, he drew his forefinger across his throat in a slicing motion. Dead. 

“I have an idea, don’t you both look down upon me like that. I am not stupid.” Atsumu shot back at you and Osamu. “I have a better idea than you at least, ‘Samu, you’ll be living all happy and cozy back in that hellhole. It’ll be me, who is dragged to the camp.”

You watched as Osamu sent a scathing, pitiful look towards his brother, one that spelt out his annoyance. “Don’ forget the treatment I received when I said I wanted to do food. It’s not allowed, but I decided to go for it. And especially, don’ forget the shit you said to me when I said I didn’t want to continue shooting.”

“You were being lazy. And unmotivated, not like you didn’t have any potential. It pissed me off.”

“Yes, it pissed you off, so you shit-talked me. Now, look who’s the one who wants to quit the thing.” 

“Don’t say it as if I really wanted to quit.” Atsumu hissed angrily. “It’s the shitty situation. You know it very well. I love shooting, but I hate all the crap they go around doing. I don’t want to be part of all that nonsense”

Osamu’s gaze bored into the other’s. He seemed to be doing some quick calculations in his head. Atsumu’s plight was visible on his visage. There was no lie whatsoever in what he was saying. Tick-tock, quite some seconds passed but the tension that had taken birth between the brothers refused to go. Growing too much antsy, you were about to speak out, when Osamu opened his mouth again, 

"I am not yer enemy here, 'Tsumu," he reasoned, "what you're trying to do is stupid. It won't take you anywhere. If they find it out, it's over for you. First things first, coming down here from the upper districts is forbidden, no one will spare us if we are found out here even. Next, you're supposed to be drafted into the military in two weeks or so. The notification is already here, they're bound to be keeping a close eye on you already. 

"And besides, it's not just you, you're dragging another person into it too. Y/n already has enough to deal with. Don't be selfish this time at least." 

Atsumu's face turned to you slowly; the low light of the room brought out the conflict flickering in his brown eyes. Finally, you seemed to find there what you had been forever cross-checking and searching for: doubt. 

The muscles on his countenance were taut with the weight of a thousand thoughts. He dove into the depths of your eyes, with those doubts and questions on his side and looked for the answers that only you could give him. This was not just about him. It was about you too. And about your lives, your futures...  
About everything you possessed.

“We could get out of here,” Atsumu told you in a low whisper.

“Where would we go?” you asked back, scrunching your face up. This was way too risky, even for your life standards that were always filled with peril. The doubt in his eyes intensified, you could feel his chest clench in disappointment and worry in your body; you and him now belonged to a realm separate from the rest of the world, each breath that left your beings communicating in a mysterious tongue. The messages had to travel through the tightening air, thick with tension, separating you from him.

“We could be free,” Atsumu pushed on. With every sentence leaving his lips, the fears in your heart rose another one of its ugly heads. You gulped before replying shakily.  
“We could be killed.”

His chest heaved, full of hopelessness. Yes, you had searched for doubts in his eyes before, to pacify the doubts in your head, that no, he meant all of it, he gambled his life every time he dropped by your rickety home just because he wanted to and for nothing else. But those insecurities in you had ended up infecting him now, the fear flickered in his eyes too (an alien emotion honestly, to be found in the background of those earthy-toned irises; only confidence and surety and mild amusement belonged there). Guilt crawled up the back of your throat at this idea. Weren’t you the infamous Y/n L/n, wanted by the enforcers, dead or alive, for singing that one song in the public arena one Friday? All that reckless courage seemed to belong to the ghost of your past, the shell you had discarded somewhere along the line, unbeknownst even to yourself. You felt like nothing more than a coward. Atsumu sucked in a deep breath.

“I became a tad bit braver just for ya, Y/n. I know you want to get out of this hell too, just, just....” his voice faltered a little, “try to listen to your heart a little bit more. Don’t forget it’ll hurt you the most if ye’re not being honest with yourself.”

The radio in the next room still played that same old tune that you loved so very much, “to the world of colours and life, fly away and never come back to this greyscape...”

Could you dare to fly too? Unlike the numerous discarded sketches lying on the table along the greying wall, unlike the dress on the mannequin in the garage, not give up on the secret screams of your heart? 

“I-I need time to think!” you blurted out into the silence of the room. Suddenly, you became aware of Osamu’s presence anew when after what seemed an eternity his nonchalant voice was heard again.

(It was truly as if you and Atsumu had travelled to another dimension, a special world where only you and him were allowed, exchanging letters in the language of vulnerability)  
“Don’t give into his whims Y/n; you’d definitely be slaughtered if you tried running away. This is too reckless—“

“I know!” you exclaimed, immediately realising how your voice had ended up cracking under the effect of too many thoughts and feelings. “I know,” you groaned, “just let me think ok? I need time. This is a lot, too much really. I need to think, please. I know all that...just let me...please...”

Powerlessness overwhelmed you thereafter; your shoulders slumped forwards in temporary defeat. A whirring blur had replaced everything else in your mind, one which didn’t make sense. A queer urge to sing arose inside you; sing out whatever came into your mind. Maybe it could bring you catharsis from all these pressurising burdens.

“You heard Y/n, ‘Samu,” Atsumu directed the other loudly, “now get out. I am spending the night here anyways."  
.  
.  
.  
.  
.  
The starry sky stretched out over your head infinitely, just like the black asphalt of the road which extended away into endlessness. The air here was fresher than any place you ever had had the fortune to breathe in, smelling slightly of the wet earth, wildflowers and freedom. The sound of footsteps munching against the rough surface of the road neared you, followed by a tap on the metal of the car; “knock, knock, hello! Are you there!” You grabbed the cold can from him before lending him a hand so that he could climb up too.

“They only had coffee,” Atsumu declared once he had made himself comfortable on the car’s roof. The radio which you had got Suna to fix a day before heading out was playing the songs out of your highway playlist. The song playing now had never been upto your liking truthfully, but he had vehemently insisted on including it. Well, you did comply, albeit a little begrudgingly at the end. After all this was not just about you, this was about you and him, us, to be more specific.

Your chase towards freedom and life, just like how the sky chases the horizon and becomes one with it. Where the quantifiable meets infinity is a tough question to crack. Your head fell onto Atsumu’s denim clad shoulder. This felt better than anything and everything.  
“How far is the border from here?” you inquired.

“It’ll take another four hours or so I believe,” he hummed out in response.

But for now, even if there could be people on your tail ready to capture you, haul you to the gallows or shoot you on sight, you could breathe freely for once.

“How long had it been since the sky was like this, you think?”

“Quite some time of course.”

Relieved of the weight of that depressive murky grey, the sky too had taken rebirth. The stars truly looked infinite in numbers today, millions of twinkling fireflies that winked and smiled and giggled at you innocently. You raised your face up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, making him turn to you and break into a smile. The simple brightness of that smile, like the light of the sun at dawn, uncomplicated and filled with gallons of laughter that was straightforward, confident and passionate in a way that was not bound by rules of this and that. The sun exists, it’s a universal truth. Life goes on, there’s nothing to be afraid of or held back by.  
That kiss led way to Atsumu’s lips connecting to yours tenderly. Guess, you would have to give credit to him for being able to be soft instead of ridiculously brash this time around. “I chose you, I am glad you chose me too,” he murmured into your mouth, and unable to resist the temptation of his moist lips, you pushed yours back upon his again. It went on again and again in a cycle, without a finishing in sight. You had set out to live, there were no goals to be achieved, other than remembering to breathe, every moment, every day. Yours his and his yours. When your vision blurred into white speckles built out of pleasure, alongside the stars you also saw the wildflowers you had once upon a time painted on the half-broken car’s door. Two idiots in love, you needed idiots in this world sometimes, to prove a few things wrong: that you could love and live, even if the rules in directories said otherwise.

It’s his kind of rebellion. To be hopelessly in love with you.

_when you come back,  
I’ll weave you a crown made of wildflowers.  
Dip my brush into your tears  
And paint your dreams with poems fresh _

**Author's Note:**

> — originally posted on tumblr at tobios-queen.tumblr.com


End file.
